


Oceanic

by tacotheshark



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Future AU, Gen, Human AU, M/M, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacotheshark/pseuds/tacotheshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a man, who works in a factory—though, so much more than that, he would say, but really not much more at all Balthazar would think, because after all that is exactly what it is: a factory. Even when it produces not product but heart, mind, skin and bone and nerve. Even when never it has had the slightest problem with murder in the interest of its raw materials.</p><p>And there is a man, who works not in a factory but lives, heavy, on a certain one’s radar. Whose deep blue eyes look infused with the ocean itself, whose tan trench coat hangs loosely off his shoulders as he goes about his days with strength that fleets him.</p><p>So—what happens, when a worker takes interest in lovely lapis eyes, takes with them to a bond as strong as that of a tongue melded to its frozen metal pole—what happens, when those eyes are wanted, hunted for an experiment, and the two have no choice but to run?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tired

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I'd like to thank the [Balthazar Mini Bang](http://balthazar-mini.livejournal.com/), for which this fic was written, and everyone who worked on it, for a) making this fic and art possible, and b) introducing me to the idea of bangs which I will most definitely be doing again in the future.  
> And of course, thanks to my lovely artist [tawg](http://tawg.livejournal.com), who may be a bit genius or perhaps more than just a bit, as her banners and fanmix could not fit my fic more perfectly, and she quenched completely any doubts I may have had about doing this mini bang.
> 
> [Art Post](http://adams-ransom.livejournal.com/30962.html) | [LJ](http://tacotheshark.livejournal.com/27854.html)

  


Let us imagine for a moment that it is winter, that snow lines the trenches of streets, that flakes stream down almost like parmesan cheese from a shaker.

Let us imagine that you are out on those streets with a group of friends—a lovely bunch, you’d say, humorous and exciting, attractive and never less than energetic.

As you trudge along the sidewalk, gloves hands seeking even more shelter in the pockets of your thick, heavy coat, a friend of yours—let’s say, the girl on whom you’ve been crushing for years, long hair brushed back into a ponytail to make way for violet, fluffy earmuffs—says to you, a shining glint in her daring eyes, _I dare you to go and lick that pole!_

There are laughs all around—one friend tells you, _Yeah, come on, it’ll be hilarious!_ And another,

_Yeah, you’re not a chicken, are you_

_Fine,_ you say, _fine,_ and you bet all those myths aren’t true, anyway.

It’s horrid on your taste buds.

It’s also the absolute worst idea you have ever had.

This is because, in your case and so many others across the continents’ teenagers, upon the wet slap of such a slippery thing to metal frozen far below freezing temperature, all the tongue’s water will freeze on contact, crystal like inside the squishy—and never before so seemingly able to peel right off—appendage, bonded so very intimately with the street corner’s friendly chunk of metal.

 

There is a similar effect when (on the event that this does happen which will undoubtedly earn a call from a manager’s office and a lazy, half bothered scolding) a clumsy employee of a mid-21st century factory lets one of the supply’s hundreds of severed pieces of flesh that is kept so deliciously preserved drop onto one of the inside shelves of a certain humongous walk-in freezer. The damage of course is far from irreparable, though, with what said laboratory works to establish.

Eyeballs, tongues, lips, hands—all are experimented on by hundreds in this factory which plans in the far from distant future to grow its very own human being, its very own superhero, America’s very own muscled, fleshy, dashing weapon.

When an announcement is made, signaling lunch break—dull, yet amplified by the speakers, voice of a manager sparking great contrast against the scratchy almost-silence of knives and scalpels being handled by the most precise hands these utensils will ever meet—each utensil is set down and each slab of muscle packed away. As they spill, flowingly, out of the building like milk splashing out from a jug, already having hung up their lab coats and safety goggles, some workers go back to their homes in their car or the city train, some to a local restaurant, only one to a particular restaurant: one that is just across the street from the building that is a laboratory and a library and an office building all in one.

In the window of this restaurant, which many would consider more of a café because of its small size, is a neon sign— _OPEN,_ it reads, in flashing red letters that have become so wonderfully warm and familiar to the man who sees them as he steps through the door which he’s done every day for years and plans to every day for the years to come.

“Balthazar, hey,” says the cashier with a small grin on her thin, pink lips, running a hand through her short blonde hair which then falls effortlessly back into place. Balthazar grins in return.

“Hello, Meg,” he says, and he orders a chicken sandwich.

They flirt, of course—often, Balthazar would say—but he is in no way interested in the girl, as he’s sure Meg is in no way interested in him. She is but a distraction, something to keep Balthazar’s mind generally at easy and away from his work which he tries not to think about at all when it is not absolutely necessary, and she is nothing more. Though, she is nothing less. Never have the two met outside of the café, and never when Balthazar is not on his lunch break.

It no longer bothers Balthazar, as he bites into the soft meat, that a chicken breast has just about the same texture as a human eyeball. Years of practice in not letting it get to him have dulled his senses to the fact that, if he were to shut his eyes, it could more easily than not be just that between his teeth. Though, it does occasionally cross his mind, and to that he thinks, _delicious,_ because joking is easy and just about everything else is hard.

It is as normal a day as any, though it becomes just a bit less so when Balthazar hears the automatic glass doors split open from behind him with a swoosh and a man—a stranger to Balthazar—steps inside before they click back into place. He pays no mind, as it isn’t much of an occasion when a new costumer happens to stumble into the shop.

It is only when the man seats himself across from Balthazar, two tables away and in the same row of booths, that Balthazar realizes how truly extraordinary this man is. Or, perhaps he isn’t at all, perhaps he’s just as average as his appearance would suggest—with his plain brown hair, average height, and normal beige trench coat—Balthazar would have no idea, he marvels solely at the man’s eyes, which are the color of a lapis gem, as deep and blue as the ocean with waves weaved about that are only fitting.

Balthazar thinks first that the man’s eyes are beautiful. Accompanying this thought is one of how grand it would be if the world’s first superhuman were to have those eyes, as well as how grand it would be if Balthazar were to be the one who supplies them.

When the man returns the next day to the café, and it becomes apparent that almost if not nearly every day he will be found with his trench coat spilling off the bright red fabric of the booth’s seat and with something fresh from Meg’s oven on his plate, Balthazar begins to plot.

He will be given a raise, he knows, likely even a promotion if he is the find to find the perfect eyes. He ponders this contently as he twirls pasta around his fork, watching the man, who, again and not for the second time now, sits two tables across from him. He wonders if the man has yet acknowledged him, though he doubts it and decides ultimately that its probably much better and easier that way.

He will be known across America, across the world, even, not simply mentioned in the very bottom of an article as one of hundreds of scientists, when the eyes of all who read it would be twitching and tired by such end and no longer interested in the slightest. No, that won’t due, and it won’t at all be the case—his name, with the names of only a few others at most, will live on forever in headlines and television specials.

He will be a legend. And what— _what,_ he asks himself with always a smirk and always the same answer—could be sweeter?

It’s probably terrible, he thinks, again in the café He’s probably terrible, probably become somewhat of a monster of a man, He’s become desensitized, he knows better than he knows just about anything else, but he can’t help but be a bit surprised when he realizes exactly to what. He knows the man will have to be killed. If he isn’t, an eyeless man walking about will surely raise suspicions and conspiracies that are more trouble than they’re worth. People have been killed before, all of which Balthazar’s been told, none of which he’s even known the name.

He can’t bring himself to care, as he hasn’t even spoken to the man. He can’t imagine, though, that caring would be anything but a disadvantage.

Every day for weeks, Balthazar eats lunch at his same table and so does the man at his own, always two tables away from Balthazar, always facing him, and always so prominent in Balthazar’s thoughts even without saying a single word or doing a single remarkable thing. Balthazar considers telling his superiors about the man with the eyes that could launch ships, but he decides ultimately against it. He must find out more—for instance, the quality of the man’s vision or whether he has any sort of blood disease, and there’s always the hideously disappointing possibility that he wears colored contact lenses.

So Balthazar waits, and waits. He waits because he cannot approach the man, for he’s sure he’s being monitored in some way and he wants not to draw attention to the man, not yet.

It has been a week. Balthazar realizes that he’s been staring. He looks away quickly, off to the side and then back to his food, hoping desperately that the man hadn’t noticed. What if he asked? And Balthazar had to lie to him, and say something other than _the government wants to harvest you for your eyeballs_? He couldn’t have that, it would ruin everything. Still, Balthazar can’t keep his own eyes from wandering back to the wonderful, murky blue of the man’s. He is grateful more than anything that the man hasn’t once looked back.

It is a day later, and Balthazar is in somewhat of a daze. He sees blue eyes and the pale lids on their top and bottom, along with visions and thoughts of the future and his life, and nothing of his surroundings or the present is anywhere near a bother to him. That is, under he’s interrupted by a pale moon that he’s shaken into realizing is a smooth face with blonde hair cascading down the sides and a knowing smirk resting on thin lips. “Well,” Meg says, plopping down eagerly across from Balthazar in his booth, “can’t say I’m surprised.”

Balthazar blinks, sits back, and rubs a hand across both his eyes. “…what?”

“Come on, Balthazar. I see you staring.” With a sly grin that only a woman could truly master, Meg crossed one leg over the other, leaning forward and tapping well-manicured nails on the tabletop. Balthazar, at a loss for words, shakes his head.

“Look, it’s not like that,” he sighs, waving his hand in a small, disbelieving gesture, but it seems to be futile.

“Sure it isn’t.” Meg punctuates the words with a wink, slipping away and back to the counter before Balthazar can get another word in.

Balthazar groans, deciding he’s got to do something soon.

It has been two weeks. Balthazar decides that, if his plan does work out, he would very much like to be the one to perform tests and surgeries on those eyes, just so that he may have the privilege of being able to look at them whenever he so pleases. They’re so lovely, captivating beyond question.

Gems, are what they are. Gems with an entire ocean and possibly an entire world packed inside, but not trapped.

Three weeks have passed when Balthazar comes to realize that he needs those eyes in his life for reasons completely unrelated to his work.

Three weeks, when he realizes that now he must never speak to the man, because if he does, he will be found out and someone will be sent in a matter of days to kill the man and pluck his eyeballs straight from his skull for science.

Balthazar sits alone in his study (though it isn’t as if he’s had any companion at all in years), letting himself sink comfortably into the plush of his armchair and the soft jazz music that flows smoothly from his stereo set—a style of music that has become thought of as obsolete in the year 2046, but one that Balthazar enjoys nonetheless and always has. He owns a saxophone as well, which he does not often play, but cherishes still, as he’s sure he’s the only person to set fingers on one in decades.

He has just gotten home from work. It has been hours since he’s seen the beautiful man with the beautiful eyes.

All he can do is think, though he reaches no solution. All he can do is mull over and repeat sentences and situations in his mind until emotions stronger than he’s felt in years are pouring in on him like waves, one after the other, pulling him into the tide and crushing him under their weight. So that he cannot get up, he can only drown, under the music, into the chair.

Perhaps he will reach the sandy ocean floor soon.

It is ten o’clock and he may have dozed off—when he’s been sprawled across a chair for hours with his eyes closed, he has no way to tell.

Sitting up and rolling his neck around with an obscene cracking sound that aches to hear almost as much as it does to feel, he realizes with a small groan that food is what he needs. Though, his empty stomach feels comfortable, in a way, comforting—it fits, an aching stomach for an aching heart, two organs that are not connected at all, but that Balthazar now feels should be. Still, he might as well make an effort to get something in his stomach before he falls asleep.

He rises, and though it hasn’t been more than a hour hours since he sat down, it feels as if it’s been years of perhaps the apocalypse, as the world has certainly shifted, somehow, he’s sure of it, but it’s also stayed so horrifically the same.

On weak, aching legs, he descends the staircase, overly and scarily aware of the possibility on his bare feet slipping off the wooden stairs and sending him crashing to the ground. He grips the railing until his knuckles are white and walks the stairs meticulously.

The light blue tile of the kitchen floor is cold against the bottoms of Balthazar’s feet, but it soon turns cool and just a bit refreshing.

In the fridge there is everything but also nothing, and looking at the display that is not usually troubling, he decides that he cannot possibly stomach meat. Just the thought makes him feel sick, and he almost wants to close the fridge and turn away, but he decides against it. So, from a shelf he takes a single pepper and places it on the table before fetching a knife from a drawer.

He finds soon that his finger slices as easily as the pepper—probably more easily, if he were to think about it, but he doesn’t stop to think much when blood is spilling out onto the tabletop, red and watery, thinning as it spreads across the wood. He can only stare as it does so, as it covers the table inch by inch, and it takes a few moments before he’s surfaced fro his daze and he thinks, _god, not now._ He’s too tired for this.

There isn’t much blood, not when he looks at it rationally. He tears a strip of paper towel from the roll and wraps it around his finger, because he can’t be bothered to find a band-aid, securing it over the cut with a stray rubber band that he finds on the counter. Not wanting at all to cook but knowing he’s got to make food somehow, he tosses the slices of pepper half-heartedly into a pan and sets it on the stove.

Five minutes pass, with Balthazar staring at the sizzling peppers, before he’d fed up with the whole ordeal of having to wait. He’s too tired for this. He grabs the stove’s dial and turns it off harshly, before grabbing a fork and eating the peppers straight from the pan. He tosses it into the sink, where it lands among other pots and plates with a loud crash.

He’ll clean the blood later.

_He’s too tired for this._

As the clock ticks on and the night swallows more of the world b the minute, Balthazar falls asleep on his living room couch watching a movie of which he doesn’t remember the name, suffering and suffocating in the endless repetition and constant analyzing that won’t let him be, of what he’s ever going to do.

He decides the next say, as he sits at his table and the man at his own, that what he’s going to do must be nothing at all.

It’s a bit silly, he decides, and he smiles to himself because perhaps the act of doing it might make him want to. It’s a bit silly, because Balthazar does not know this man, and he never has. He hasn’t even a name, other than _the man._ This is what Balthazar tells himself, over and over, until he feels like there is dialogue pouring out of his ears and flooding the air around him, _you do not know this man, he is not important to you._

But it’s not silly, not really, because even though he’s never fallen for someone, Balthazar can’t imagine that this is anything but that. And, both to his surprise and his expectations, it feels just like that. Like falling. Falling into a pit from which he cannot emerge, as hard as he tries to climb. And the pit must be filled with water, must be filled with the vibrant blue ocean water of the man’s eyes, because Balthazar is sure he is drowning in it.

With this in Balthazar’s mind, with his soul having been dropped into an endless ditch with a tarp stretched across the opening to seal any light Balthazar might see, days pass, and then more.

A week passes, and though Balthazar knows he was never truly happy, he now cannot even fathom the meaning of that simple word.

It is selfish, he decides. He is selfish. And though the idea is riddled with self loathing, it is comforting, in a way. It is comforting, because it just makes so much _sense._ It gives him a reason not to approach the man, to den himself the privilege of ever speaking to the man, because he does not deserve it. And it is for the greater good, because he is nothing but immature and he surely does not need this man in his life as much as he imagines. Surely.

He’d known, anyway, _of course,_ that to continue to be s stranger to the man would be for the greater good. How could letting the man live be for anything but? Though, he sometimes imagines that, in ignoring the man, he is doing himself as well as the man a great disprivilege, thinking of which he tries desperately to get himself to stop. But, sometimes, he does think, and he begins to curse his mind for all that it brings him.

So—he says hello to the man, and then what?

He says hello to the man, and someone or a wire picks up on it, and the government and his superiors know.

He says hello to the man, and suddenly there are teams and—for all Balthazar knows— _hit men_ out to get him.

He says hello to the man, and the man is dead. So simple.

He says hello to the man, and the next thing he knows, those dashing ocean eyes are on a metal plate in front of him, ready to be torn and snipped up and groomed for genes, and the rest of the man’s body is nowhere in sight, disposed of in a landfill or a ditch, not even given a proper funeral.

So he will not say hello to the man. He will not speak a word. Simply, easy, and he has nothing to fight but his own desire.

That is, until the man speaks to him.

It is as normal a day as any.

If Balthazar’s days can even be considered normal, anymore, of which he tries restlessly to convince himself. What is there to be strange? Certainly not the man, because the man should be irrelevant to Balthazar’s life.

He sits at his usual table, skimming his fork lamely over a meal for which he has no appetite. He hasn’t much of that, lately. An appetite. Still, he goes to the café each day, for he can’t bring himself to tear himself away from it. When he is in the mood for eating, it is never for eating meat. He can’t possibly, not when a piece of meat could easily someday be the man he… _loves_

No. _Likes._ Still wrong. _Is interested in._ He sighs. He doesn’t even know this man—why can’t he remember that?

…Because, he feels like he’s has the man in his life for ages when in reality it hasn’t been more than a few months.

He looks down at his salad, makes himself think about that instead. Because salad doesn’t hurt. _Unless,_ he jokes half-heatedly to himself, _it’s got Brussels sprouts. Then it’s damn right painful_

Still, as always, his mind wanders, and with it go his eyes. And he is not looking _at_ the man, he is merely _looking,_ and the man happens to be in his way. Still, Balthazar’s eyes skim over the man’s and find themselves halted and unable to move away when the man turns out to be looking at Balthazar as well, for the first noticeable time.

Balthazar’s heart is warmed, yet panicked, before he manages to convince himself that eye contact isn’t enough to draw attention.

The man smiles shyly, raising a hand in a limp wave, and with the grin his eyelids crinkle like pale flower petals around his eyes.

The man speaks up, “Hello,” and it’s not very loud and it doesn’t need to be in the otherwise almost-silence of the restaurant. His voice is gravelly and low, and a bit strained from his not having spoken since he’d sat down.

“Hi,” Balthazar says, smiling, trying not to let on that his heart’s just dropped into his cave of a stomach. The man offers another small grin and a shrug before he goes back to his food.

Balthazar is, despite his best efforts to remain calm and collected, panicking now as it’s absolutely inevitable, and it easily becomes evident that he cannot even function as he normally would when he can hear his heartbeat and feel his entire body beating with it, as it it is it’s own planet with a gravitational pull that sucks Balthazar’s skin in around it as the pull strengthens and recedes, and strengthens again, with the pull sucking all the oxygen out of Balthazar’s lungs as well.

And so, he leaves. He leaves, because he cannot do anything else, and as he steps across the tiled floor he is too aware of the taps that his shoes make against it, a rhythm that _taps taps taps_ to the reality of disappointment, of surrender, of panic and of absolute helplessness, not to mention Balthazar’s bubbling rage at himself.

So many things, he could have done. So many things that could have saved this man, that Balthazar didn’t do, and he realization hits him like a slap in the face just as the double doors open in front of him and, as they part, the rushing wind does the same.

He, so easily, could have stopped going to the café and never seen the man again. Why hadn’t he done that?

He does not go back to work, instead just to his car. He hadn’t the heart or the energy for that, or anything even resembling that. _If I’d had anything of the sort before,_ he thinks, and would have scoffed, had he, again, the heart or the energy. But anything he’d had has now been extinguished, put out like a lone dancing flame by a puff of air.

He could have found a different restaurant so easily, he thinks, even after the first day. A different restaurant in which the man would be nowhere in sight. It would have been like leaving a home, a home he’s lived in for years, but it would have been worth it, would it not? Maybe one just around the corner or even just a few buildings down it wouldn’t have matter, as long as it was far away from the man and there was far from any way Balthazar could hurt him.

When Balthazar gets home, the first thing he does is open his laptop and find one of the “online home buying” websites that he’s heard are so convenient. It’s crazy, he knows, but it could work, couldn’t it? He could help the man run away, to somewhere else, where he won’t be found and he won’t be killed.

So what, if his computer history is tracked? He can lie, he can always lie. _It’s for a vacation home,_ he can say. He doesn’t think about it much, doesn’t care, he just wants to figure out something.

He gets an e-mail.

_A specimen has been brought to our attention._

_All measures will soon be exercised to obtain said specimen._

_Expect new materials by the end of the week. Thank you._

The small part of Balthazar that had been believing that possibly, his small exchange with the man had not been picked up on, has now been put out as well, another lone flame that dances no more.

And the rest of Balthazar, that is panicking and working out a plan where each detail falls into place as light bulbs light up on the timeline in his head, kicks into overdrive and soon, he has a plan. _An actual plan._ He’s so relieved he could cry, but still, he is panicky enough to cry as well.

He scrawls his address as neat as he can on a slip of paper, puts it in his coat pocket, and goes to bed, sleeping more soundly than he has in weeks.

The next day, he does not go to work. He calls in sick, and goes only to the café at his usual time. He sits facing the door, this time, and it’s almost as if he’s sucking in the sight of the door instead of air, and he can’t breathe because if he does, it will be gone from him—not only the door but his concentration, which he holds tight like it is life itself. And the door holds him tight, as if he is connected to it by a rope.

The slip of paper on which he’d written his address is pinched between his fingers inside his pocket; he won’t let his fingers stray from it for a moment, lest it get lost. But he realizes soon that his hand may be sweating a bit, and he can’t get the paper damp. What if it rips—is he rips it? He slides his hand out from his pocket carefully.

Balthazar sees the man the instant he comes into view—first, the bottom of a trench coat swishing near the ground, then the rest of a person and Balthazar’s hand flies straight to his pocket the instant he can be sure that this is _the_ man.

Yes, the paper is still there—where could it go? He watches intently as the man approaches the doors, then through them, then is walking into the café.

As soon as the man is just a few feet away, looking at Balthazar quizzically as he passes by, Balthazar propels himself upright and standing and it feels like breaking a seal to be on the other side of some invisible gravitational barrier. Swiftly, trying not to look into startled blue eyes, he grabs the man’s forearm, searching for flesh to grip through layers of clothing, and the man flinches at the touch, gasping and tensing. Though the man says not a word, his ragged, fear-stricken breaths convey a very clear message, and Balthazar feels terrible for that, absolutely terrible—yet, he leans nonetheless in close to the man’s ear and whispers through clenched teeth, “The government is planning to kill you and harvest you for your eyeballs.” A small whimper escapes the back of the man’s throat as he gulps, and Balthazar wonders what must be going through his mind; is he scared? Obviously. Interested? Likely at all to believe what Balthazar is telling him? “ _Here_ is my address,” with that, Balthazar slips the paper into the man’s trench coat pocket. “I can help you if you show up here sometime soon. Very soon. Alright?”

Balthazar doesn’t wait for an answer before he releases the man’s arm harshly and walks determinedly away. Though he does not once look back at the man, he can feel before he’s far away the man’s hand shooting up to rub his arm, where Balthazar had probably bruised him. _Damn._

_What a first impression._

But he can’t worry about that now, not when all that matters is getting the man away and safe. He just hopes to whatever divine force he’s never believed in that while he would be surprised if the man didn’t fear for his life, he not fear for it in Balthazar’s hands.

 

In the dark Balthazar sits, jittery and nervous on his living room couch, with no light but for that of a few lit candles scattered about the room. His laptop sits next to him, charged, because he can’t plug it in.

He’s turned all the power off. Can’t risk being watched by hidden cameras, or whatever may be hiding in his walls. He’s almost surprised at how easily he could get both the man and himself gutted and killed. Maybe not gutted, but certainly killed.

He isn’t quite sure why he’s gone to all the trouble to get everything safe for tonight; he doesn’t even expect the man for a few days. He can’t imagine the man will be all too eager to jump right into whatever Balthazar will be getting him into—hell, he doesn’t even know if the man will be coming at all.

Still, in the dark he sits, and he waits, without much of an idea of for what he is actually waiting. The severely boring lack of electricity and therefore entertainment begins to grate on him after a while, so he gets up and plucks a book at random from the small bookshelf he keeps. He’s read them all, but it’s something to occupy his time at least, so he sits back down and flips it open.

He, however, doesn’t end up reading the book for very long—the doorbell is pressed outside and throughout the house it rings.

How anxious he is when he turns the doorknob, and how surprised when he opens the door to find the man standing on the doorstep, looking up at him with the biggest puppy dog eyes he’s ever seen and a clearly faked determination that shows helplessness, if nothing else. The man gulps and coughs. “Hello.” More surprising is the fact that the man seems already to have packed a bag, an old backpack that he has slung loosely over his shoulder.

Balthazar blinks. “Hello.” He hasn’t the slightest clue what to say, so he decides he may as well figure it out as he goes along. He steps aside and says, “Come in?”

The man nods, clearly at a loss for words himself, and steps into the house, hesitating with wide eyes when he takes notice of the candles.

“It’s… I’ll explain everything, alright?” Balthazar sighs as he closed the door and offers the man his hand. “Balthazar Powers.”

The man shakes it. “Castiel Novak,” he says, and his voice sounds uncomfortable, forced. Like he’s going to be sick.

Balthazar almost feels bad for all the panic and pain he’s causing the poor thing. It only makes him angrier at the people responsible for this whole mess. “Castiel,” he repeats with a small grin. “Lovely name.”

“Is it? Always thought it was kind of strange.” Castiel cracks a small grin but it’s too forced, too awkward.

“Nonsense. Lovely.” Balthazar grins as well, and he imagines he looks just the same, “Care to take a seat?” He gestures to the couch and moves the laptop to the coffee table, where the plastic shell audibly clacks against the glass surface.

Castiel does just that, slipping the backpack from his shoulder and dropping it to the floor. Balthazar takes his own seat next to Castiel. “I suppose you want to know what’s going on?”

Castiel nods, eager but anxious, eyes searching Balthazar’s face actively but failing to find a thing before he begins to speak. “Yes. Please.”

“I can’t promise you’ll believe me.”

“I will.”

“It probably sounds a bit… surreal.”

“I don’t care.”

Balthazar sighs, searching for words, scanning his mind like the database of the robot he feels like, lasers scanning over words that jumble into letters and numbers of random degree—it isn’t too complicated, is it? He’s never thought it so. Though, never had to explain it, or ever was allowed to—“Well, I work for this sort of… this government agency, and we’re—they’re trying to create a human being without using any of the usual reproductive methods, for… for efficiency, for science. A super race, I’d say. They… they want your eyes.”

Castiel blinks, looks at Balthazar, opens his mouth to speak but shuts his lips again. And he mumbles finally, “They… what?”

“They want to kill you,” Balthazar says, trying to keep his voice steady when he feels he’s being whisked away by the current of the dam he feels he’s broken in saying it all aloud. “They’re going to kill you and take your eyes. Experiment on them, slice them open. It really is horrible.”

Castiel looks frozen, his entire body, as his eyes still and his brow creases, and a tiny shiver takes over his fingers—loosely folded hands in his lap, he looks so terribly interested yet so willing to escape and forget. “Why? Why do they want that? _Me?_ ”

“Because your eyes are unique, they’re lovely, I’d say. I’m… I’m sorry.”

“…Do you have proof?”

Without a word, Balthazar opens his laptop, shows Castiel the last night’s e-mail. Castiel reads over it, and then again, and then with a soft sigh and thick gulp he says, “And that’s… that’s me?”

He scans it with worried eyes on more time, and his eyes stall halfway through the short text when Balthazar tells him, “Yes. I’m sorry, Castiel.”

“Are you going to help me?” How it hurts Balthazar to see those shining eyes laden with grief, with distress—like the blue on the brink of day turning to night, and it’s raining, clouds thick with gray and Balthazar cannot do a thing to stop the whether.

“Of course,” he mutters.

“How?”

“You might not like it,” Balthazar says, but Castiel’s gaze on him doesn’t fleet for a moment, and so, he continues. “I can help you buy a house up in Canada, or, or something, and we’ll get you on a train and send you on your way.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?” Castiel asks, worry spiking in raised eyebrows and widening blues. “With the government? The law? Your job? Even… even for me just _being_ here!”

With a grimace, Balthazar scratches the back of his neck. “I can’t imagine anyone knows just yet. I switched off all the power in the house—hence, the candles—and with that probably went anyone secret cameras anyone’s set up to watch me. I figure I’ve got about three days until anyone notices…

“Give, well, nothing, probably. Take, about three days.”

“So,” Castiel gulps, shaking his head slightly as fear builds up, bursts through his eyes, and he looks at Balthazar solemnly, “so they could kill you too?”

“Right now,” Balthazar sighs, “I’m just concerned with getting you safe.”

Castiel nods, sucks a deep breath into his heaving lungs. “Why? I’m… I’m a stranger.”

Balthazar says, “We’ve known each other for months,” and it doesn’t cover a thing, he knows—but it’s all he can offer.

“We’ve known each other _existed_ for months.”

“Well how about you?” Castiel’s eyebrows shoot up at the question. “Why do you trust me?” Balthazar asks, air thick in his voice which grows exhausted, worn. “Why do you even believe me?”

With another deep breath and a shift of his weight on the couch’s cushions, Castiel asks, “Do you really want to know?”

“Definitely.”

For a moment Castiel is silent, eyes slipping shut as he slowly draws in air, and when he opens his eyes again, stares directly ahead—it’s almost as if he’s trying to float, to float away, and Balthazar can only hang on by the hem of his trench coat—he says: “The reason I moved out here all those months ago, is, I was almost killed. And I would give anything not to have that happen again.”

It’s a shock to Balthazar’s spine, spilling warm throughout his limbs before drenching them with ice water—he can only stare at Castiel’s face, at the creases in Castiel’s skin, and though his eyes are wide the rest of his body feels just the opposite.

“Yes, I… I was stabbed. By a stranger in the street. I have a scar, on my stomach. It’s ghastly.” Another gulp, and Castiel is looking at Balthazar again.

“Well,” Balthazar mutters, as he hasn’t a clue what else to. “I’m sorry.”

“I had to get away from there, I left pretty much everything behind.” Castiel’s eyes flit over to Balthazar’s laptop for a moment before he says, looking into Balthazar’s eyes like he’s trying to turn him to stone, like snakes with spill out from his hair any moment and strangle possibly himself, “I have nothing to lose, anymore.”

Balthazar’s fingers feel so impossibly numb, as he opens the screen once again. “How... how do you feel about Ontario?”

The laptop feels like jelly in Balthazar’s fingers, the couch like it could melt right under him, Castiel like he could disappear right into thin air because it isn’t possible that this all is true.

A hallucination, brought on by stress?

Balthazar gulps and he buys the house anyway—a quick transaction, thank the internet—and as he shuts the laptop and watches Castiel’s nervous eyes flit about the room, he feels like he’s floating on warm water, like Castiel is the rescue tube that’ll pop at any moment.

“Is that a saxophone?”

Balthazar’s eyes are drawn in the direction of Castiel’s, to the top of his bookshelf and the saxophone that sits there, untouched and unmoved for years, glow cast by candles onto its dark rust, glimmer across worn keys. “Yes,” he says—it’s nothing special. “I got it when I was a kid.”

“Oh,” Castiel says, “that’s nice. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those. I never could play, though.” There’s a small smile gracing his lips—and, well, anything to make Castiel happy, now, even just slightly closer to—

And so, Balthazar stands, crosses the room to the bookshelf, reaches up on his heels and plucks the instrument down from its resting place. “Have it,” he says as he hands it to Castiel, and the blue eyes that Balthazar still finds absolutely astonishing widen as Castiel stands as well.

“Really?” Castiel’s fingers hover over the brass, as if he’s afraid to touch it.

“Yeah.” Balthazar says, forcing a chuckle and a small grin, planting the saxophone in Castiel’s nervous hands. “I don’t ever play it, anyway. Why don’t you think of it as… something to remember me by, after we get you on your way,” and he starts out joking but finds that he quite likes the thought, that he wants, more than anything, Castiel to remember him.

Castiel smiles as he runs his fingers meticulously over the rusty metal, weighing it in his hands, clutching it like it’s one of Balthazar’s vital organs he’s just been given. “Thank you.”

Hesitantly Balthazar reaches out, lays a hand over Castiel’s shoulder, gives a gentle squeeze and feels muscles shift under his fingers. “Don’t mention it.

“Now, I’m afraid you may not be able to go home tonight.”

“I know,” Castiel utters, “I was worried about that. I can stay here, can’t I?”

“Yes,” says Balthazar, “yes, of course. I have a guest room.”

Castiel sighs, gulps—“Thank you. So much.”

 

The train is parked, stalling as passengers filed onto it, and by the tracks Balthazar stands, by an open window where sits Castiel, where final goodbyes are said less than twenty-four hours after first hellos.

“Balthazar,” Castiel says, sucking in a deep breath that stays supple and strong all the way into his throat. He blinks, and Balthazar watches. “I’ve… I’ve wanted to do this ever since I saw you in that café for the first time.” He blinks again, swallowing and shuddering. “I’m sorry if this isn’t okay, but, well—I guess I’ll never see you again so it doesn’t even matter…” He chuckles softly, mostly to himself.

Balthazar stares, in perplexity as well as anticipation, because Castiel is now leaning forward, out of the window, and grabbing the collar of Balthazar’s shirt—he presses his lips to Balthazar’s much more eagerly and shamelessly than Balthazar would have ever envisioned the man capable.

And suddenly, as quick as a snap of the fingers, with Balthazar’s breath taken away and his lips still parted, Castiel is torn away with a buzz of engines and a loud scrape of the metal train against its metal tracks.

If Balthazar’s never been sure of anything in his life, he’s sure with very rushing ounce of blood and every panicking nerve in his body that he _has to get on that train._

On a whim and shaking all over because he has to figure out _something,_ he puts his hands on the stream of windows that rush by him, hoping that maybe there will be an open window onto which he can grab. His fingers find and dig into an open window soon—he barely has time to shout “Sorry!” to the person to whom it belongs before he’s pulled off the ground and struggling to find purchase with his feet on the side of the train, moving at least a hundred miles per hour with nothing to hold him to the train but his fingers which feel like they can be torn in half or off at any second.

Because he has no other option, he plants his shoes on the side of the train and hurls himself onto the top—he’s thrown back a few yards before he can get a handle on one of the rails that line the train’s roof (used to transport things, mostly, certainly not used for this). The rail’s metal is cold against his palm but he pays no mind, holding onto it like it is life itself because it very likely is. The wind is strong, rushing in Balthazar’s ears like the roar of a dragon and breathing a fire that is cold even though it burns. He might be screaming or groaning but he has no idea, he can’t hear a thing or pay attention as he flies halfway off the train, struggling to secure himself to it with both hands while his shoes slips right off and away from each rail he tries to push them against.

He’s found a hold. His hands are clasped around one rail and his feet are pushed against another, and the wind is ruthless in that if it doesn’t succeed in pushing Balthazar off the train it’s sure to peel, strip, and push away each layer of flesh until he is no more, just a skeleton that they’ll find and say, _Well, looks like some dumbass thought he could hitch a ride._

_No._ Balthazar’s going to get on the inside of the train, he’s going to find Castiel—while he’ll admit that this is not far at all from suicidal, he’s not going to die, not going to let himself. He’s got to find Castiel.

When he reaches out with one hand for the next rail, it’s like trying to push though rock, though the wind is not as hard but certainly as thick and as hard to break through. But he manages, somehow, even though he feels like the wind is going to peel off his face and bend his fingers backwards and snap them right off or maybe flat against the backs of his hands.

It’s like fighting gravity on a planet that has far too much gravity for its own good, like trying to swim to the bottom of the ocean when the water is thick and heavy and much too dense. Balthazar has never been athletic and he now rues that more than anything he has in his life. Still, he’s climbed two rails already, he can climb more. He reaches for the third, and he’s actually starting to believe this might work.

Five rails, now. Seven. Ten. He can’t believe he’s doing this. He keeps going.

Fifteen. He can’t believe he’s actually going to survive this.

He’s lost count, and he thinks he’s almost found Castiel. _This_ could be suicidal, now, he’s sure of it, but he has to see. He slides over to the edge of the roof and leans down, both hands on the rail, and his upper body is whipped back and smacked against the side of the train as soon as it’s lowered.

He sees a woman, who looks absolutely horrified to see him. But he doesn’t care for her in the slightest—he sees Castiel, three seats ahead, and his heart lunges without enough force to knock him off the train all in itself. He flings himself back up to the roof and climbs, again, trying to muster as much force as he can in his weakened arms.

When he drops again and sees Castiel, staring forward and bored like any other passenger, he swears he’s never felt more relief. Risking his grip on the trail he now holds onto, he drops an arm to knock on the window. When Castiel looks up to see him, he looks at first just as shocked and horrified as the woman had, if not more. He scrambled to open the window—when he does, Balthazar shouts, “Pull me in!”

Castiel takes Balthazar’s arm—the one with which he’d knocked on the window—while the other still grips the rail, of which Balthazar is terrified to let go. Still, when Castiel’s got him in far enough for him to barely reach the trail, he releases it, slinging that arm in through the window for Castiel to grab, legs flailing against the outside wind.

Castiel is able to pull him in all the way and he tumbles into the compartment, lying of the floor for a moment before he can stand and promptly collapse into the empty seat next to Castiel, struggling to find oxygen and to find his voice. He swears again that he has never felt more relief, and also that his muscles have never been so strained and ached so much.

“What—“ Castiel is struggling to find words as well. Darting his eyes every which way and chewing the inside of his cheek when he finds none. “What—how did you—“

“Couldn’t just let you go after you kissed me, could I?” Balthazar wheezes, closing his eyes and groaning when he takes notice of the dull pain in his head. “Held onto the train and climbed up the roof.”

“Oh my god,” Castiel mutters, shaking his head and looking back up at Balthazar every few seconds as if to make sure he isn’t seeing things. “You’re amazing.”


	2. Normal

  


Balthazar is still breathless, still in a bit of a trance, as he steps into the house with Castiel behind him and Castiel’s bags in his hands, as he’d offered. He still can’t believe he and Castiel will be living together, like a real couple, like two real fugitives who are finally safe from the law and _together._ Together, is all that matters.

Especially now, when everyone is gone and Balthazar has nothing, but Castiel.

It hurts, when he things about it, hits him hard in the chest and he suddenly wants to just cave in and collapse, but then he watches as Castiel looks around the house with wide, blue eyes filled with wonder and emotion, and a small grin cracks on Castiel’s face before he shakes his head and it disappears.

Balthazar decides then that maybe this could all be okay. It could even be good.

“Should I unpack, or… or something?” Castiel’s gruff voice doesn’t come as a shock through the silence that has settled, but quiet itself, it is soothing, nervous itself but calming.

Balthazar nods; when he opens his mouth, it takes a moment for words to come out. “Yeah. Yeah, do that.”

There is silence, again. Balthazar waits for Castiel to tell him where to put the bags, and Castiel’s eye flit about the inside of the house and linger on a specific door.

And Balthazar sees, then, that there may be a bit of a problem. He gulps, before he states the obvious. “There’s… there’s only one bedroom.” Only one bed.

“Well, I, um…” Castiel coughs, swaying on his feet and pushing his bangs back from his face. “I guess we’ll just have to share.” He smirks, and Balthazar’s heart is lightened, suddenly, no longer a hot, dead weight in his chest.

Everything’s going to be good. Great, even.

He chuckles and follows Castiel into the bedroom—into _their_ bedroom—where he leans against the doorframe and watches as Castiel packs the few things he brought into the dresser drawers.

Their few things are in their places, clothes in the dresser, saxophone sitting on top of that same dresser, and Castiel stands awkwardly, not sure what to do next with himself. So, Balthazar suggests, “Should we try and meet the neighbors?”

Castiel nods, sighing. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I saw a diner nearby.”

“Yeah, sounds good. Let’s go.”

When Castiel passes back through the bedroom’s doorway, Balthazar claps him gently on the shoulder. “Act natural, he says, and it’s only half a joke.

Castiel chuckles, a low rumble thick from his chest, too full and all too genuine for Balthazar to find it anything but a bit unsettling in this particular case. “What’s natural?”

“I really don’t know.”

“I think I used to.”

 

The walk to the diner is short, not more than twenty yards, just down the road.

The diner itself is small, with only four tables inside, two booths against the wall and two regular tables, all with bright red seats that would have been old-fashioned if the diner was built and decorated a hundred or two years ago.

Yet, it’s a bit…. nice, Balthazar decides. It’s a bit… _groovy,_ and he grins to himself when the word comes to mind as he and Castiel step through the glass double doors that are surprisingly not automatic. He holds the door for Castiel—he hasn’t done that in a while, not for anyone. When he thinks of it, he realizes that, to the best of his memory, the only time he’s held the door for someone in years was when he first invited Castiel into his house, to which he does a mental double take when he realizes that that was only a few days earlier.

Well, time flies, he decides, even when you’re not on a plane but on a train, even if you’re not soaring but sinking into an ocean that you can probably never swim out of. Which is unsettling, even when you may not want to get out at a given moment.

Behind the counter sits a girl, pretty, young, cheerful. She’s blonde, like Meg. Gorgeous lips, like Meg, when she smiles and waves at her newest customers. He hair is longer and a bit darker, and her lips fuller, but Balthazar refuses to dismiss the familiarity so easily. Familiarity is good, calming. He’s never had much of that, apart from the old café. _The old café._ It’s only been days. “Hey,” greets the girl, showing her teeth in a natural grin, leaning over the counter with thin fingers pressed against its metal top. “What brings you two to town?”

“ _Long_ story,” Balthazar tells her, grinning even though it isn’t amusing at all. “Hello. I’m Balthazar, this is Castiel. We’re new, just moved in down the road.”

Castiel, standing by Balthazar’s side, smiles.

“Fair enough,” the girl grins, sticking a hand out in front of her and shifting her weight onto the other. “I’m Jo.”

Balthazar shakes Jo’s hand, and then Castiel. She has a firm handshake—must be something she does often. Friendly, then, if it wasn’t clear already. She’s strong, Balthazar could like that.

“So, you two married?” Jo asks, still cheery, sitting back into her chair. “Or what?”

“No, erm.” Balthazar racks his mind, searching for a word. He realizes then that he doesn’t even know for what sort of word he is searching. What even _are_ they? “Together,” he says, bracing himself for a reaction from Castiel, not sure what that reaction might be.

“Partners,” Castiel says, correcting, sounding so sure in the notion, and Balthazar is surprised and more than a bit pleased.

Partners, then. Balthazar never pictured himself in a steady relationship, as he’d gotten bored of them fairly easily after high school. He isn’t quite sure how he feels about the fact that the first person in years he’s been with for more than one night has him running away from the law and seeking refuge in Canada.

Partners, all the same, and it’s exciting and a bit scary, but it makes so much sense.

“Why don’t you come back later, meet my parents?” Jo suggests, leaning forward, elbows on the countertop. “You’ll love ‘em. They’re great.”

“That would be lovely,” Balthazar says, finding with surprise that he means it. “Around what time, do you think?

 

As they have time and not much else to do, Castiel and Balthazar decide that it might be best to go shopping; “Might as well get some food or something,” Balthazar says, and Castiel agrees.

They take a taxi to the nearest city and ask around for the nearest grocery store, and then department store, and soon they have enough groceries and kitchenware to pass as normal people. _Ah, normality._ They buy cell phones as well, the cheapest ones they can find.

Back at the diner, Balthazar holds the door open once more for Castiel and finds that he rather likes it. Inside, they find Jo sitting across a booth table from two older people who must be her parents.

“Hey!” Jo waves them over, gesturing to the empty seat next to her.

Castiel slides into the booth next to Jo, and Balthazar follows. The seat isn’t very big; Balthazar can either be pressed stark against Castiel or fall off the seat.

“Tight fit,” Jo points out with a sympathetic grin. “Sorry about that.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Balthazar replies, with a grin as well, fumbling under the tabletop for Castiel’s hand which Castiel gives him easily with a small grin of his own.

“Well, Mom, Dad,” Jo chirps,” This is Balthazar, Castiel.”

“Hey boys,” says Jo’s mother, “I’m Ellen.”

“And I’m Bobby,” states her father, who wears a trucker cap and flannel as well as a beard.

A conversation is fallen into easily, and Balthazar finds with more surprise that he quite enjoys his new neighbors. Not that he hadn’t expected to—he hadn’t given it much thought.

He finds then that Bobby is not Jo’s biological father, he had died when Jo was young. “I didn’t really know him, so I don’t know much to miss,” she says with a small shrug. “Bobby’s great though. Best dad you could have, and I’ll swear by that.”

Bobby chuckles, “Well, I try,” and Balthazar laughs as well because he cant help but smile.

 

“Cas?” Balthazar sits on the living room couch, while Castiel fixes a glass of water in the kitchen behind him.

“Hmm?”

“Do you remember Meg?” Castiel, concerned and listening, makes his way to the couch to sit himself gingerly down next to Balthazar. “I may be starting to miss her a little.”

Castiel sips his drink slowly. “The girl from the café?”

Balthazar nods.

“She was nice,” Castiel remarks.

“Yeah, she was.”

Setting his glass on the coffee table with a quiet clink, Castiel shifts to better face Balthazar, staring up at him with big, concerned eyes. “You want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Balthazar sighs, drumming his fingers anxiously against his knees. “I just feel a bit like I never appreciated her. Never even told her I was leaving.”

“You were friends, then?”

Balthazar has almost forgotten how little he and Castiel truly know about each other’s lives—it isn’t at all a pleasant realization. “No. We weren’t really. We should have been, though. I did like her.”

“Oh,” is all Castiel says, and Balthazar wonders for a moment if he’s done something wrong. He wrings his fingers in silence, until Castiel speaks again. “Do you wish that… that you hadn’t left?” Castiel asks the question like a child would, soft and hurt, scared of what a parent might reply.

It almost shocks Balthazar, how easy is it to come up with his answer. “No. Of course not,” he says, and Castiel only stares, waiting for him to continue. “If I hadn’t come, I would’ve regretted it all my life.” He sighs, slinging an arm around Castiel’s shoulders, where Castiel relaxes beneath him.

“Do you miss anything else?” Castiel asks.

And Balthazar hates to admit it even to himself, but to Castiel he could never be able to lie. “I miss a lot, honestly. I miss my house, I miss my friends. Pretty much everything but my job. I never really liked it, anything, but I really can’t help but be a bit nostalgic.” Castiel leans into his shoulder. “How about you, Cas?”

Castiel takes a moment to think, shifting against Balthazar to make himself more comfortable. Balthazar hears each breath of Castiel’s and feels each rise and fall of Castiel’s chest, hugging the smaller man against him when he finally says, “No. I don’t. I didn’t have much to miss.”

Balthazar blinks, unsure of whether this is a good or a bad thing. He settles on saying, “I’m glad.” Castiel sighs.

“I’m sorry I took you away from all these… these things,” Castiel says, then, quiet again, and he almost sounds like a child in the face of punishment, even with his gruff voice and deep, troubled eyes.

“Trust me, Cassie, I’d much rather be here with you.”

Castiel flinches at the nickname, but the message is all the same.

 

At night there is no fluorescent glow of streetlights that, anywhere else, would line the road on either side, no incessant honking and rumbling of cars that always seem to have a place to go and never the time to stop or slow.

Balthazar has never spent the night in quiet like this, in darkness and calmness like this. Never without the soft hum of a TV or the constant reminders that there is a world outside, just across a wall or outside a door.

But now, there could be a world outside, there could be people on the earth other than Balthazar and Castiel, but neither would have any idea as they lie in bed together, both stiff as boards and both feeling tremendously awkward, neither saying a single word but both hyperaware of the other’s presence just across the mattress.

“Castiel,” Balthazar says, his voice sprouting like a plant from the quiet that is a nourishing soil, which feeds plants that are thoughts and others like the one that’s just grown. “You introduced us as partners. Earlier today. At the diner.”

He hadn’t been sure if Castiel was awake, but he sees now that Castiel, like him, had been lying with his eyes wide open and his thoughts on the run for an hour or so. “I did. I… I’m sorry. I just thought—“

“No.” Castiel stops talking abruptly when Balthazar interrupts him. “No, that’s. Good. We’re… we’re good.”

“Alright. Good.” For a moment, neither man says a thing.

And then, Balthazar feels the bed dip beneath him, where Castiel is leaning on his elbow, and then learning hesitantly over Balthazar’s face. When he leans down, Balthazar leans up, and their lips are locked for just a moment before Castiel lies back down and says only, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Cas.”

 

Balthazar wakes the next morning to find the bed dipping further on his side than it had during the night, and when he turns his head, he sees nothing but white sheets and pillows. He’s alone; no matter. He rises, stretching his arms above his head, and makes his way into the kitchen.

Castiel sits at the kitchen table, still in his t-shirt and sweatpants, with a half-eaten waffle on his plate that came from a much bigger plate of waffles that sits in the center of the table. He grins, waving with the hand that isn’t holding his fork. “Hey,” he says, mouth full and smiling. “Made breakfast.”

“You are _fantastic,_ ” Balthazar grins, pulling up a chair and fixing his own plate. “When did you wake up?”

Castiel shrugs. “Not long ago. Ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Well, thanks for not waking me up. Need sleep after all this.”

“I was going to, actually. When I decided to cook. But I couldn’t, you know? Glad I didn’t, then.”

Balthazar nods, mumbling a _“mm-hmm”_ around a mouthful of waffle. He swallows. “If we’re gonna try to live here, you know, normally, you think one of us should get a job?”

“Yeah, I could. I saw a bookstore in town yesterday. _Help wanted._ So, I’m thinking of applying there.”

“Oh, alright. That’s great.”

“Yeah. I liked the old bookstore.”

 

It is just about noon when the doorbell rings, and Castiel hurries to answer it. He is greeted by a couple, twenty or so years older than himself—a man and a woman, and the woman holds a casserole in oven-mitted hands. Castiel says, “Hello,” and Balthazar, on the couch, tries to peek around him to see who’s at the door.

“Hi, I’m Mary,” says the woman, with long, blonde hair and a friendly smile. “And this is John, my husband. Made you a casserole,” she grins, and shrugs.

“Oh, um, hello Thank you,” Castiel stutters, a bit stunned; Balthazar wonders if Castiel socialized much at home, and makes a mental note to find out. He sighs—still so much to learn. “Would you like to come in?”

“That would be great,” says Mary, and so they do, with Castiel closing the door behind them and hovering uncomfortably as Mary goes o put the casserole on the kitchen table.

When everyone is introduced and four plates are made, John and Mary sit in kitchen chairs and Balthazar and Castiel on the living room couch, all around the coffee table, on which the casserole in its pan now sits.

“Bobby and Ellen told us about you guys,” John says, mouth half full and fork in half. “Thought we might as well come over.”

“Well, we’re glad you did,” Balthazar grins, “it’s always great to meet the neighbors.”

“We asked our sons to come with us,” Mary remarks with a sigh,” but they don’t seem to be coming. Nothing against you, of course—it’s just, they tend to keep to themselves and well, to each other, nowadays.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Balthazar says, “I’m sure we’ll all become acquainted in due time.”

And he is right, for the doorbell soon rings again. Standing in the doorway are two young men, one very tall and the other somewhat not, standing too close to each other to be anything but brothers, if it wasn’t already clear that they were John and Mary’s sons. “Hey, I’m Sam,” says the taller of the brothers—he looks just like his mother, Balthazar thinks.

“And I’m Dean,” says the other. Balthazar invites them in, where they find seats at the kitchen table. “Sorry we’re late.”

“Glad you could come,” Mary smiles.

“Can I get you drinks or something?” Castiel asks, hovering about the kitchen.

Sam gets up, saying, “Yeah, let me help.” Before coming around the side of the table and into the rest of the kitchen, he leans down and presses a quick kiss to Dean’s cheek. Castiel says nothing, but Balthazar, somewhat stunned, has to ask—

“Wait—are you… together?” He hopes he doesn’t sound too intrusive.

Dean sighs, rubbing a hand over his face before letting it fall to the table with a thump. Balthazar cringes. “Look—if you have a problem with it, we’ll get out of your house, but beyond that, we really couldn’t give a shit.”

“No! No, it’s fine, I have no problem at all. It’s just… you don’t see that often.”

“More often than you used to,” Sam remarks, sliding back into his seat next to Dean with drinks for the two of them. “Anyway—why move out here? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Balthazar shrugs, figuring he might as well give some sort of an explanation, however false. “Money issues.”

“ _People_ issues,” Castiel cuts in.

“I hear ya,” says Dean, tipping his glass.

 

Seating on their living room couch, with his arm around Castiel’s shoulders and Castiel, exhausted, leaning against him, Balthazar asks as the night draws on and Castiel becomes heavier with sleep, “Cassie, can I see your scar?”

“You’ve seen it,” Castiel mutters, shifting so that Balthazar’s arm covers more of him, like it is a knight’s shield and he is a prince in need of protection.

“I haven’t taken time to properly _look_ at it,” Balthazar mumbles, leaning down so that his lips move against Castiel’s cheekbone as he speaks.

Castiel sighs, shaking his head. “But why?”

“Because,” Balthazar tells him, “you’re lovely, and I bet it’s lovely. And I want to see it, and I want to see _you._ ” He presses his lips to Castiel’s, then, gently, holding Castiel’s head in place with a hand tangled in his messy hair.

“But it’s not.” Balthazar takes Castiel’s hands in his own. “It’s hideous. You’ve seen it, it’s just a big ugly scar.”

“You’re wrong.” Balthazar kisses Castiel again, more passionately, prying Castiel’s lips apart with his own, and though he is caught by surprise Castiel scrambles to reciprocate. “You know I love you, don’t you?” Everything about you, even the scar. So, what do you say?”

Castiel sighs, again, but he mumbles, “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine. Okay.”

Balthazar pulls Castiel into a hug, pressing soft kisses against his neck. “Thank you Cassie,” he mutters, “come to bed, then?”

Castiel gets up and walks with his shoulders slumped, clearly nervous, and Balthazar wants simply to make Castiel feel better. “Relax,” he says, as Castiel sits on the beg and begins to toy with the top button of his shirt. “It’s just me.”

“Yeah,” Castiel gulps, popping the first button but only that. “Sorry.”

Balthazar sits and takes Castiel’s lips once again. “Lie back,” he says, and Castiel does, sighing when his head hits the pillow with more force than he’s expected as he falls back onto it. Balthazar takes Castiel’s buttons into his own hands, slipping each one open easily and feeling Castiel’s chest rise, fall, and stutter with each of his nervous breaths. After popping the last button, he runs his fingers over Castiel’s pale chest and stomach, lingering when his fingertips brush against the raised tissue of Castiel’s scar. “You okay?” Balthazar mumbles against Castiel’s lips, and Castiel nods 

Slowly, Balthazar lowers his mouth to Castiel’s neck, kissing where it meets his shoulder before grazing his lips across Castiel’s collarbone. “Still okay?” Castiel nods again, breathing heavy and loud, but he flinches, then, when Balthazar splays a hand across his stomach, trapping the scar under his palm.

He trails kisses down Castiel’s chest, feeling the skin arch and quiver under his lips. When he reaches it, he presses his mouth to the edge of Castiel’s scar—it tasted like blood, but he doesn’t mind, all he minds is that Castiel gasps the instant it’s touched, arms twitching at his sides and clearly fighting the instinct to wrap them protectively over his stomach and back away. “Cas,” Balthazar sighs, keeping his lips on the scar as he speaks while looking up to meet Castiel’s eyes. “Don’t be scared. You don’t have to be, If you can trust anyone, it’s me—you know that, don’t you?”

Castiel exhales, trying to find control of his voice when he’s obviously shaken beyond belief. His fingers twist in the sheets and his chest tightens with his inhale. “Of—of course.”

“I know everything right now is pretty terrifying,” Balthazar goes on, “and I’m scared too, believe me. But if there’s ever a time you should feel safe, it’s got to be right now, here, with me.”

Castiel relaxes—not much, but enough, and he no longer cringes or holds his breath at Balthazar’s touch. Still, his breaths are loud and they shake his entire skinny body, which Balthazar feels tremble under his lips and he loves it—to feel the blood rush under Castiel’s skin and color his face, to know that none of it would be possible if Castiel hadn’t run away with him. Because Castiel lives because of Balthazar, breathes because of Balthazar, and Balthazar is starting to feel a bit fortunate.

His lips move to Castiel’s hipbones and his hands to Castiel’s waist, before he slips the button of Castiel’s trousers and soon Castiel’s small gasps around because of pain or nervousness anymore.

Sometime during the night, as a mess of words and nothings spills from Balthazar’s lips as Castiel moves under him, he gasps, “Baby, you are _beautiful,_ ” and he kisses away the tears that sprout from Castiel’s eyes and the humble grin that spreads across Castiel’s lips.

 

Castiel jumps when someone suddenly slides into the diner booth next to him, turning immediately and furrowing his brow. “Hello?”

“Hey! I’m Gabriel. You must be Castiel. And you,” says the stranger, smirking when his eyes land on Balthazar, who sits across the table, “are Balthazar, yes?”

“Yes, hello,” Balthazar says, amused, interested. “Guess we’re the talk of the town now, huh? It’s a shame—we’re really not very interesting.” From across the table, Castiel smirks, shaking his head with a small sigh.

“Well once I get to know you I’m sure I’ll beg to differ. “So, Castiel—” Castiel looks up at the mention of his name. “—can I call you Cas?”

“No.”

Gabriel laughs. “Cassie?”

“Castiel.”

“Well someone’s pushy. Anyway, I live across the street from you two. You know what—” Gabriel’s fingers are locked, elbows on the table as he leans forward and suggests, “—how ‘bout I take you two out to a restaurant in town, so we can really get to know each other. My treat.”

“Well, that sounds lovely,” Balthazar grins, easily, “Castiel?”

“Alright. Great.”

 

It’s huge, absolutely, even by Balthazar’s standards of someone who’s been around so much more than a small town like the one that he now calls his own, and if Castiel’s perpetually astonished eyes are anything to go by, Balthazar thinks, he’s very well agreed with.

After the most filling meal Balthazar has ever had, a great deal of conversation, and Castiel being jokingly called a “spoilsport” on more than one occasion by the man across the table, the bill is brought by a very tall man in a very trim tuxedo, and only for a second is Balthazar able to sneak a peek at the number with genuine curiosity before Gabriel takes it and slips his credit card from his wallet—“Your treat, you said, and I know, but… are you sure? That really isn’t fair.”

With a small chuckle, Gabriel glances at Balthazar then back to where he scribbles a sloppy signature on the receipt. “I can take care of it.”

“Are… are you sure?”

“Relax,” Gabriel says as he shuts the small, black bill holder. “I have money.”

“…Oh. Well, then. If you don’t mind me asking, and feel free not to answer if you do, _what_ are you doing _here,_ of all places?”

Gabriel shrugs, gives a small, crooked grin. “Grew up here. I’m sentimental, I guess.” He pauses, picks up his fork again, slips another bite between his lips and doesn’t bother to swallow before going on, “You know, fun fact: you two moved into the house my parents used to live in. Before they died.”

Castiel speaks up then, hesitant as he tends to be, “Oh, my god. I’m so sorry. Both of them?”

“Yeah, car crash.” Gabriel shrugs again and sets his fork down, raising his eyebrows as he takes another sip of wine. “But I mean—whatever, it’s been a while, I got over it.”

“My sympathies, nonetheless,” says Balthazar, softly, stunned.

 

At home, in bed, Castiel says, a shock into the quiet of the night, “Gabriel seems a bit… infatuated with you.”

Balthazar turns to his side, lays an arm across Castiel’s stomach. “Come on Cassie, we live in the guy’s dead parents’ house, he’s probably a bit infatuated with the both of us.”

Castiel shrugs as he stares up at the ceiling—“Maybe.”

 

“Hey—you want some books?” Chuck looks up from his laptop screen for the first time in the conversation, waiting expectantly for an answer with wide eyes and a wavering smile.

“Oh, sure,” Castiel tells him, and he reaches eagerly into his messenger bag, pulling out a stack of said books.

“They might not be very good, I mean, not many publishers seem to think they, um—but, I try, yeah? Just tell me what you think, okay?”

Balthazar, at the counter, looks back at Castiel in a booth, who smiles and says, “I will, thanks. Well, it was nice meeting you, I’ll just… leave you to your work then.”

“Great,” Chuck breathes, pushing his too-big glasses sloppily up the bridge of his nose and getting absorbed once again into his computer screen.

At home, Balthazar comments, “Chuck seems… interesting.”

Castiel is curled up on the couch with one of Chuck’s books, with a cup of tea cooling on the coffee table which he’d made and forgotten about entirely. He looks up at Balthazar, twisting on the couch to better see him. “This is amazing,” is all he says, and Balthazar leaves it at that.

 

When Castiel strolls into the living room, an age-old saxophone, rusting and dark, cradled in careful hands, Balthazar at first is a bit confused, though it does warm his heart to see the instrument again after so long with nary a thought of it. “Hey,” Castiel says, a small shrug as he weighs the brass in his fingers.

“Hey.” Balthazar stretches his neck around, leans over the back of the couch to better see Castiel. “Why have you got that?”

“Will you play something for me?”

“Oh, I haven’t played that old thing in years,” Balthazar groans, and Castiel only keeping on looking at him—no, he can’t resist those eyes for a second. “Oh, alright, give it here.” As Castiel does, passing it on to Balthazar with the utmost care, too gentle and hesitant in the presence of it to be anywhere near experienced and it makes Balthazar grin, he steps around the couch to sit, and to watch, staring expectantly with wide eyes at Balthazar. It isn’t the first time he’s made Balthazar feel like a deity, revered, idolized. “I doubt I know anything you’ve heard.”

“I don’t care.”

Balthazar chuckles a soft, “Right,” before lifting the mouthpiece to his lips and blowing air into it tentatively. His fingers find the keys easily, the weight of the cool metal soothing in his hands. He sighs softly, happily, and he plays, an old tune he learnt in high school, of which he doesn’t remember the name or more than about a minute’s worth of notes, and even then Castiel watches, absorbed, like a fish caught by the most delicious piece of bait, drawn to air, drawn out to Balthazar.

Nostalgia is sweet, yes, but Balthazar thinks Castiel is sweeter.

 

“Is Ellen here?” Balthazar asks, offered beer in clutched in his hand, Castiel at his side and Bobby sitting across the coffee table from the both of them.

“No— _why?_ ”

Balthazar shrugs limply, “I don’t know, when you invited us over I just sort of figured—very well, then.”

“Well,” Bobby says, adjusting the trucker cap without which Balthazar hasn’t yet seen him once, “I wanted to talk to you boys alone.”

“Oh? Why’s that? Is something wrong?”

“ _Well,_ ” Bobby drawls before taking a swig of beer, “You tell me. Now, who’re you two runnin’ from?”

There’s a small clink as Balthazar sets his beer down onto the table’s glass surface, paralleled by the click in his mind that says, no. _No._ “Excuse me?”

“How did you…” Castiel mutters, staring, stunned, just as is Balthazar.

“Please,” Bobby scoffs, “you show up one day in the middle of nowhere, with almost nothin’, no back story, no nothin’—something’s going on here.”

“Well I can assure you,” Balthazar says, as reassuringly as he can which he can’t imagine is very, “that there is absolutely nothing you need to worry about—”

“You think I’m an idjit? Look, boys, I’m just tryin’ to help, I ain’t gonna blow your cover.”

Balthazar sighs as he weighs his options, sharing a conflicted glance with Castiel—and, he figured, if he’s going to trust anyone, perhaps it should be Bobby. “Alright, don’t… don’t tell anyone.”

“What, you don’t trust me?”

“No, of course I—well, right… it’s probably a long story.”

Bobby says, “I got time,” and Balthazar leans back into Bobby’s couch, contemplating the best way he can explain it all and coming up with nothing.

“…Cas…?”

“The United States government was going to kill me. For my eyeballs.”

Bobby simply looks at Castiel for a moment, before blurting, “Oh don’t _lie_ to me—”

“I’m not.”

Balthazar sighs, rubbing his temples. “He really isn’t. They’re trying to grow a sort of superhuman. Crazy, I know, but they… they were going to kill Castiel. I knew because I worked for them.”

Bobby is squinting, examining—“Are you _serious?_ ”

Castiel says, “Yes.”

“Damn.”

Even as scrutinized as he feels, as exploited, Balthazar can’t help but find warmth in telling, in sharing, and perhaps though he’s lost years of the experience to know, this is what family could be. And as he remarks it to Castiel later in the night, the light of the moon that grows by the second is paralleled in the brightness of the deep blues of Castiel’s eyes when he says, “I know how you feel. It’s… it’s family, it is.”

“Did you have a family to leave behind?”

“I left them behind long before you came along,” Castiel mutters, a forced chuckle, a weak smile that Balthazar kisses away.

 

Balthazar fumbles, sloppily, to fit his house key into the front door’s lock, cursing himself and all alcohol each time the metal key scrapes across the area around the keyhole.

When he finally gets the door open and steps, swaying, into the house, he finds himself caught under Castiel’s intense gaze, while Castiel sits on the living room couch, staring. “Where the hell were you?”

“Told you,” Balthazar sighs, closing the door behind him and stepping into the room. “Went out with Gabriel. What’s wrong?”

“It’s late,” Castiel says, almost in a whisper as he looks down at the floor and then around the room, gulping. “I… I was worried.”

“About what, dear?” Balthazar asks, standing in front of Castiel, looking down with the most reassuring smile he can manage.”

“About you. About… I don’t know,” Castiel sighs, shaking his hand.

“Well, stop worryin’, love, I’m fine. So go to bed, c’mon?” Balthazar lays a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, rubbing it softly, feeling each of Castiel’s heavy breaths in the shakes of his shoulders.

Castiel stands, still for a moment, before launching himself forward and wrapping his arms around Balthazar’s waist, at which Balthazar jumps in surprise. “Just… answer your phone next time, or… or something,” Castiel mumbles, voice low and muffled by his face being pressed into Balthazar’s shoulder.

“C’mon,” Balthazar chuckles, and Castiel frowns, exhaling softly hugging more tightly. “I can take care of myself. So, bed, then?”

 

“I think,” Castiel says over dinner, as it begins to darken outside and a dim shadow coasts in through the window, “that Gabriel likes you.”

“Now _why,_ ” Balthazar sighs, “would you think that?”

Castiel fidgets in his seat, setting his fork down and laying his hands on his thighs. “I guess you haven’t noticed how he flirts with you, then?”

“Come on, Cas, we’re friends, that’s it.”

“He keeps you out all night… away from me…” Castiel chews on his bottom lip, shifting again, looking up at Balthazar almost as if he’s scared.

“Cas, really—you have to relax. Besides, who would want _me_?”

“Well. I do.” Castiel murmurs with a small shrug. “I love you, so, why shouldn’t he?”

Sighing, Balthazar holds out a hand, in which Castiel hesitantly lays his own. “Cassie, it doesn’t matter, alright? So what if he does? I’ll never be unfaithful to you, you know that. So trust me, love?”

Castiel nods, gulping, shaking his head but muttering, “Alright.”

 

Coming to life in the dim moonlight are hundreds of tiny drops of color, coming alight one by one in every conceivably hue, bringing to life as well the pine tree around which they reside, the tree stood in the middle of the field behind Jo’s diner.

After Jo plugs in the lights, she stands—there are a few claps, a few cheers and a few laughs; and there is warmth in the cold, in Balthazar’s fingers intertwined with Castiel’s, in Balthazar’s shoulder pressed against Castiel’s as they could not stand closer.

And then everyone is filing into the diner, inside which tablecloths are lain across the wall’s booths, with dishes strewn about in the style of a buffet. “Everything’s on the house! Jo shouts, met again by cheers and smiles.

There is laughter, so much laughter—when Gabriel calls Chuck a _hipster,_ “come on, kid, everyone loves Christmas, don’t pretend that doesn’t apply to you,” when Castiel trips over a chair and of course is embarrassed at first but comes to not quite mind it, when John and Mary reminisce about their high school days together and when Sam joins in sharing stories of his and Dean’s childhoods, or rather, childhood.

And when everyone is in their respective house, presumably asleep, Balthazar catches Castiel under the mistletoe Castiel had hung earlier over their bedroom’s doorframe.

 

As it nears midnight and Balthazar steps warily through the front door, Castiel is not waiting, worried, curled up on the couch, he is not waiting to confront Balthazar with the time or with the worry that never fails to make Balthazar crave the atonement that Castiel so easily gives—instead, Balthazar finds him sprawled across their bed, lips parted and eyes shut yet twitching, sheets rustled and tangled around his legs from what strikes Balthazar’s heart as seems like what’s been hours of tossing and turning.

When Balthazar wakes he finds Castiel lain half on top of him, arms wrapped around him, Castiel’s head on his chest and small streaks of tears having dripped onto his shirt—like Castiel is an oyster and Balthazar is his pearl, like Balthazar is the gem to be treasured and Castiel is his protector, like Balthazar doesn’t feel like it’s the other way around. He sighs, wrapping an arm around Castiel’s waist, heaving blankets over them both and settling back into the pillow to shut his eyes once more.

 

When Castiel speaks his voice is like the ding of a shrill bell in a crowded restaurant, a small mutter of, “I talked to Chuck today,” hesitant and hushed, still somehow cutting through any other small noise to Balthazar’s ears.

“Yeah?” In the near empty finer, Balthazar twirls a fork in a plate of pasta. “What about?”

“About Gabriel.”

“Oh, Castiel—”

“No, listen.” Castiel’s eyes are bright, lively like the blue electricity that visibly courses through his veins as he speaks, staring down Balthazar like observing an experiment, and not once does he touch his plate. “He had a fling with Jo a few years ago—”

“That’s understandable.”

“A few months before we moved in, he tried to make a move on Sam. Next anyone saw him, he had a black eye and Dean had a broken wrist.”

Even a bit shocked, Balthazar can sigh, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Castiel leaves it alone with a soft mumble of, “Maybe you’re right.”

 

Balthazar can tell that Castiel is nervous. He has been, ever since he’d gotten home from work, and even now, as he sits next to Balthazar on the couch, eyes darting between Balthazar and the small TV they’d bought—the only one they’d been able to afford. More than once Balthazar has asked, _are you alright?_ And more than one he had been met with a jittery, _yeah, of course, I’m fine._ So he had decided not to press.

“Can we talk about something?” Castiel asks, finally turning away from the TV to look only at Balthazar.

“Of course, anything,” Balthazar tells him, switching off the TV absent-mindedly with the remote, intently focused on Castiel as he had been all day but didn’t want to let on.

“This might be a bit uncalled for.”

“It’s alright.”

Castiel takes a deep breath, drumming his fingertips against his knees. “I’m kind of… _nervous,_ about you hanging out with Gabriel so often.”

Balthazar hates to sound so incredulous, especially when Castiel is clearly so unsettled, but he can’t help it, not when he had been expecting something so much worse or more serious. “ _That’s_ what this is about?”

“What what is about?”

“You’ve been panicky all day and it’s just about me being friends with Gabriel? Cas, I told you, nothing’s going to happen.”

Castiel shifts in his seat. “I’m just worried, is all.”

“You have no reason to be!”

“But I do!”

Balthazar shakes his head, rubbing his forehead, just a bit miffed. “So… what you want is for me to stop hanging out with him.”

Castiel opens his mouth and shuts it again before saying, “That would be nice, yes.”

“Castiel, you’re… you’re not my _mother._ ” Balthazar hates it to come out like that, an annoyed scoff, and he hates especially to be so sarcastic to Castiel, but he feels every word he says and he can’t help but spit out some more. “I know what I’m doing and I don’t need someone to order me around.” He stands, thinking it a good idea to go somewhere, though he hasn’t a clue where; but Castiel stands too, and before he knows it, Balthazar’s gotten himself into a regular shouting match with the once person with which he’d never expected to be angry,

“I’m not ‘ordering you around,’ I’m just worried!”

“God, Cas, have some faith in that I can control myself!”

“It’s not you, it’s him!”

“I’ve told you so many times, Cas, _I’m not going to let anything happen!_ ”

“Balthazar just _listen to me._ ”—Castiel is fuming, now, so loud and so strong, nothing Balthazar would ever have expected from his shy, quiet Cassie. He presses his lips into a straight line, fighting back any sound he might make when Castiel continues—“ _I love you, dammit, and I am terrified to_ death _of losing you to some slutty homewrecker—of, of losing you to anyone! Because you’re all I have and you’re all I’ve_ ever _had and I can’t_ fucking—“

Castiel is silent, suddenly, and Balthazar dares not say a word.

Contrast, such contrast: if reminds Balthazar so poignantly of his old job, of how the booming announcements would cut suddenly in or out and make the less experienced men jump in surprise, of how different these announcements would be against the quiet snips of scissors and scrapes of scalpels. And that is now. Now, this is how he feels, standing in silence in front of Castiel in their living room and he can almost hear the scissors and scalpels scraping away at his bones while he waits and waits for Castiel to speak, with every second tugging on his heart like Castiel is a fisherman and he is the fish.

“I think I sometimes… _forget…_ ” Castiel says, and his voice is beginning to waver and his eyes to water as he tucks one arm around his stomach and brings the shaking hand of the other up to his quivering lips. He gulps, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment like the sun is just five feet from where he stands. Like Balthazar, standing just about five feet from him, is his sun. “…that you risked your life to save mine, and I should never ask anything more of you.” He gulps again and his entire body shakes, frail, helpless, crying with just the first tears slipping from the sides of his again closed eyes, sliding down his face and dripping off his jaw line.

“ _I_ think you sometimes forget, dear…” Balthazar’s voice is soothing, suddenly, and he is calm. Castiel flinches when Balthazar steps forward and takes his hands from their places fixed against his own torso. It’s a bit difficult, getting Castiel’s hands free, because Castiel is so stubborn and so protective of himself; but when Balthazar does, he cradles Castiel’s soft hands in his own like delicate flowers he’s just picked for a loved one. Flowers, beautiful and smooth, that Balthazar holds because someone he loves needs him to. He runs his thumbs gently over Castiel’s palms as he goes on, “…that I _willingly_ risked my life to save yours and I am willing to give you just about anything you want.”


	3. Oceanic

  


 

There is the light pressure, as Balthazar wakes, of a fingertip trailing slow circles, lazy designs, across his chest and neck, and as he blinks his eyes open to see Casting staring up at him, he mutters a groggy, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Castiel says with a small, adoring grin. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, I know.” As Balthazar stretches to kiss Castiel’s forehead, Castiel presses fingers softly into Balthazar’s neck.

“You know, you never really struck me as one to care about silly things like Valentine’s Day. It is, isn’t it? I don’t know, I like it.”

Balthazar shrugs slightly as he leans back into the pillow as he yawns, and says, “It is, tremendously. And no, I never really did care, but I figured you might.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm. We should go for breakfast.”

“We should.”

A shower together begins the day, and after, a Valentine’s Day special at the diner. Back home, as the door shuts behind them, Castiel mumbles almost eagerly, albeit hesitantly, “I got you something.”

Balthazar cracks a grin at that, pressing a kiss again to Castiel’s forehead as a low chuckle spreads from his throat. “I got you something as well.”

“Should I go first?”

“You definitely should.”

With that, Castiel rushes off to the bedroom closet, to which Balthazar follows him, finding a seat on the bed’s rumpled sheets. In just a moment Castiel emerges with a gigantic teddy bear almost too big for the arms in which he holds it, and as he lowers it from his face his grin is nervous, almost apologetic, and Balthazar can’t help but laugh. “It’s lovely.”

“It has wings,” Castiel says, as he turns it around to show two white, glittering angel wings. “It might be a bit… stupid, I don’t know.”

“No, it’s adorable, really.” As Castiel sits and Balthazar trails a fingertip across a glittery cloth wing, he can’t help but chuckle again, because it really is a bit absurd, which makes it so much more so. Adorable.

“…do you want to know why?”

“Pardon?”

“Why I got you a bear with wings? It’s weird, I know, but I didn’t just pick out something generic.”

“Very well then, now I’m curious.”

“Well, it’s still kind of stupid. Honestly.” Castiel laughs to himself, before he goes on, “I just feel kind of like you’re, well. A guardian angel or something. God, this sounded so much better in my head.

“Well, you saved my life. Just… showed up one day, told me I was going to—to be killed, and well, you were right. I’d be dead right now. If I weren’t for… for my guardian angel.” A small smile plays at the corners of Castiel’s lips as he shrugs, again, eyes almost nervous, fingers twitchy as he wrings them in his lap.

If Balthazar has ever in his life been touched, it’s now, as he can’t keep a grin from breaking out and spreading across his face until his mouth hurts, nor can he help muttering, “Oh Castiel, you really are something,” before taking the bear, sitting it on his other side, and taking Castiel’s hands and lips in his own—pulling back, he doesn’t believe the novelty of looking into Castiel’s eyes will ever fade.

“I’m afraid I haven’t gotten you something quite so special—” As he reaches under the bed Balthazar resents more than ever his lack of the money for a piece of lapis jewelry or something of the sort, as he’d planned in a dreamland once lain awake with Castiel in bed, yet Castiel seems thrilled nonetheless when he sits back up with a more than average sized box of chocolates in hand. “—well, you can never go wrong with sweets, can you?”

Castiel cracks a smile, with a happy sigh. “You’re wonderful.”

“Well my dear, I certainly would never hesitate to say the same of you.”

“No, really—” Castiel sighs, softly, and he goes on, quietly, “—I’m glad it was you, who, um—who got stick with me, here.”

“I always thought it you who got stuck with me, honestly,” Balthazar grins at Castiel who does the same, “and I’m glad as well. Granted, if you weren’t as lovely as you are, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Castiel is silent, for a moment, milling it over in his mind it seems, before suddenly he says, “Do you think it was… a good thing? All of this?”

At the question, Balthazar has no words, at first—no, quite not a good thing, not a bad thing either—the _only_ thing, his only option, and he says after some thought, “I think that it’s definitely opened my eyes... Do you?”

Castiel blurts without a second thought to it, “Yes.”

All Balthazar can think, all he can say as his heart swells in his chest and the corners of his mouth twitch in an adoring smile, is, “I _love you,_ Castiel.”

Balthazar had never thought that happiness would only come from running from the law.

He’s long found that he hasn’t a single objection, anymore.

He finds that he can’t seem to see a problem in a single thing. Not even when Gabriel calls him, asking if he wants to come over and “watch a game or something, I dunno, it’s been a while. I got a new TV ‘n everything.”

And so Balthazar begins with, “Cas, I’ve got something to ask of you.” And after, “Cassie, love, you can come too,” Castiel ends with,

“Fine—go, so long as I don’t have to.”

Balthazar presses kiss after kiss to Castiel’s pouting lips with fervent grateful apology, making sure to leave a smile on Castiel’s face.

The sofa is soft, the TV is huge, flat against the wall and bright as a garden in its picture; and _pretty damn great,_ Balthazar thinks, as he sits next to Gabriel, a beer in his hand, his other slung across an armrest.

“So—what do you think?” Gabriel’s eyebrows are raised, compliment to his perpetual smirk, as he asks in reference to the giant screen.

“I think you have far too much money than you know what to do with.”

Gabriel scoffs and Balthazar lies back into the couch, setting his beer down onto the coffee table and crossing one leg lazily over the other. “Fair enough,” comes Gabriel’s reply, and Balthazar chuckles.

He can’t wait to get home, to tell Castiel, see, there was nothing to worry about, my dear, nothing at all so don’t panic, alright?

There isn’t anything to worry about, he’s sure, completely sure until there is a hand on his knee and before he has time to react there are lips on his own, and he stands fast enough to knock his glass bottle onto the floor where it shatters, spilling amber over a stark white carpet, about which Balthazar could not care less. “What the hell?”

Gabriel’s eyes shine with a hint of shock as he looks up, that Balthazar wants to simply knock right off of his face.

“You do know I’m with Castiel?”

“Well of course—you’re together every second of the day, it’s so sappy it’s disgusting.” _Why in hell,_ Balthazar will tear up walls to know, _is he so damn calm?_ “And no—doesn’t mean necessarily that you can’t be with me for a night.”

“ _The hell it does!_ ”

“Yeah, yeah, fine. I get it.”

“But do you really? Because I’m sure you _got it_ when it came to Sam Winchester as well, yeah?”

Gabriel sighs, rolls his eyes—if his irises are gears, Balthazar is a string caught between them, stretched to his limit and far too wound up. “Look, man—”

“No, you look, alright? Never once would I ever _consider_ doing anything that might harm Castiel, and it’s almost insulting that you would ever think I would.” Balthazar’s begun to pace, glass crunching under his soles, being ground into the golden-stained carpet fibers. “Well maybe I shouldn’t _quite_ blame you—after all, you probably haven’t a clue what a relationship that lasts more than twelve hours is like.”

“Hey, now that’s not fair—”

“Oh _that’s_ not fair? How about kissing me when the man for which I have given _everything_ is just across the street, waiting for me to come home to him? Waiting for me, in confidence that nothing would happen because I _told_ him—and he told me— _god,_ I should have listened—well, no, _you_ should have some sense!”

“Look, man, fine, I’m sorry if I—”

“Yeah, fine, but honestly Gabriel, what in hell were you _thinking?_ Did you think I’d be okay with all of this? Did you perhaps underestimate what Castiel and I have been through together? If you have, seriously—did you honestly believe that we came out here for a change in scenery or whatever the hell I told you?”

Gabriel’s eyebrows raise at that, but his too-smug expression lives on, irritating enough on its own, now, and Balthazar mumbles a final, “Damnit, goodbye,” before footing out the door and slamming it swiftly behind him.

_Damnit._

With his heart lodged in his throat Balthazar treads across the street, legs restless as his shoes smack against the pavement, and as he flings the door to his house open he wants only to punch it. He almost does. “Castiel,” he breathes, when he finds him sitting on the couch and looking up in wonderment at the slam of the door.

“Hey—what’s going on?”

“Come to bed, I’ll tell you everything.”

And so Castiel does—without taking his eyes off Balthazar for a second he switches off the TV and follows Balthazar warily to the bedroom, sitting against the headboard while Balthazar cracks his neck, stretches his arms, and finds place next to his beloved. “God, Cas, you were right,” he mutters, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing them with the heels of his palms.

“I was right?” Castiel’s loveable puzzled look makes Balthazar’s heart twinge in his chest. “About what?”

“About Gabriel,” Balthazar sighs in resentment, “He kissed me.”

“What?” Castiel’s eyes are wide, jaw clenched but wavering—he looks to Balthazar like he’s about to cry, shaken up and unsettled.

“He kissed me, so I shouted at him, and I left.” Balthazar grimaces at the sight, and slings an arm over Castiel’s shoulders, comforting as can he be though Castiel is still tense.

“What did you tell him?”

Rubbing Castiel’s shoulder and forearm gently, Balthazar replies, “Oh, lots. I could try to paraphrase, if you’d like—would you like that?”

Castiel lets his head fall to Balthazar’s shoulder, nods—and so, with a warm body at his side and a steady heartbeat to calm his own, Balthazar stares up and into the wall and he speaks, steadily, “What the hell, you do know I’m with Castiel…” And Castiel grins at that, nestling into the crook of Balthazar’s neck.

“…never once would I ever consider doing anything that might harm Castiel…”

“…that’s not fair? How about kissing me when the man for whom I’ve given everything is just across the street, waiting for me to come home to him? Waiting for me, in confidence that nothing would… that nothing would happen, I… I should have listened…”

He hugs Castiel closer, tighter, feels Castiel blink with watering eyes against his neck.

And when he’s finished, he feels lips move against his skin, hears a soft whimper punctuated by the waver of a crying voice, and he’s sure he’s misheard, he’s sure he’s misunderstood because if he didn’t know any better he would swear that Castiel has just mumbled, unsure but perhaps throwing caution to the wind, just loud enough for Balthazar not to have mistaken a whistle of the wind for it, “marry me.”

 

A cool chill wisps through the air, blows across faces and whips up tablecloths, but not a mind is paid to it as plates of freshly barbecued dinner, courtesy of John and Bobby, line the edges of these tablecloths, as each plate is accompanied be a flute of champagne.

Jo is the first to stand, glass in hand, fingers almost restless against its stem. With a warm grin she addresses the couple who sits just across from her, and she begins, “From the moment I saw you two walk into my diner, I figured you were already married, and maybe you were, the equivalent of…”

And Ellen, with her long hair flowing freely across her shoulders, “I’ve known ever since we all met that you two were somethin’ special…”

Sam talks in his toast about how close he’s become to Castiel, and Dean doesn’t make one.

John speaks, and then Mary—and Gabriel, with a soft glint in golden eyes and a small, apologetic grin seated across thin lips, whose toast ends comfortably with, “I know there’s a lot between you two, there’s a long story, and I’m not even gonna try to guess what that might be—and, I’m sorry if I ever doubted that for even a second. So, here’s to the lovebirds who came and shook up our town from the inside and made it, well, pretty damn new.”

There’s clapping, there’s congratulations, and Balthazar, with a suit on he’d never imagined he’d wear for anything but business, and with Castiel by his side in the same, feels as if finally, he’s taken the last step over the threshold between fantasy and reality, because there isn’t any way this can all be real, happening in _his_ life. Yet, even as surreal as it all seems, it’s far too real as well, with vivid grass and a bright blue sky, with everything he’s ever wanted sitting just next to him with deep blue eyes.

“This is a lot of attention, huh,” Castiel mutters, a small grin on his lips and an even smaller shrug.

“I suppose it’s unavoidable,” Balthazar replies as Castiel looks up at him shyly. “But you’re happy, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” Castiel says it quickly, so surely, and it’s amusing, almost, if not absolutely adorable.

Balthazar grins at that, looking up just in time to see Jo sneak a swift kiss to Chuck’s cheek, after which Chuck looks away, then back at Jo, before his eyes widen in alarm as he realizes that quite a few pairs of eyes are on him. Jo only laughs, and Chuck shrugs.

“Lovely,” Balthazar comments, and Castiel chuckles.

The weeks leading up to the wedding are a purely blissful expanse of time, one in which panic is but a word, worry is but an idea—there is no one in the world outside of their small town, no one from which to run, no reason in the world to hide. Only smooth sailing, as Castiel and Balthazar see no wind, only just in the shallow end as their lives suddenly stretch out, even still a mystery, in front of their eyes, and they haven’t a clue what will come apart from each other, couldn’t care less what will come next apart from each other.

_Married._ Balthazar had never imagined such a word would name him. Castiel tells him that he once imagined he would be, but abandoned the notion the day he woke up in a hospital and couldn’t imagine himself letting another person get anywhere close.

The day comes, breezes by, easy to catch and easier to savor.

The April air is warm, soft, fluttering about each guest, each piece of elegant clothing, cooling each face while casting a warm glow upon it. Jo’s hair, cascading down her back and against skin and the fabric of her dress, flows in waves as it is blown about by the wind, styled and luscious and mesmerizing in its soft movement. She looks and she is the nature of the waves of the ocean, beautiful, always either energetic or serene or a combination of the two, always bringing light and happiness and always the staple of a peaceful, happy day at the beach.

Sam and Dean sit together, inseparable, glued to each other’s sides as they always have been and they always will be. But neither weighs on the other—they only help each other soar, swim, love. They are young, and so intensely passionate about each other, about everything else. They are _life,_ itself, embodied in two young men who have embraced every aspect of it. They are the life that swims throughout the ocean, making it interesting, making it worth exploring.

And there are John and Mary, together as always, sitting next to their sons whom they love just about as much as they love each other. High school sweethearts, together for years, together forever. And if that is not love, then what is? If they are not the union of the tide that meets the sand—that shares itself while the sand does the same so that they are one together, water soaked sand like two people who are saturated to the brim with feelings about each other—then who is?

Of course, every ocean has its mystery as well. Its deepest, darkest corners that beg to be explored but seldom can. There is so much that resides in their corners, these ocean floors and crevices in coral and rock. And none of it that does not choose to show itself can be found. Nothing but that that decides to peek out and show itself to the world. Sitting with everyone else but so clearly alone in his head, is Chuck, next to Jo with his fingers laced in hers, staring into space and thinking about a fantasy world, fuel for a book, or perhaps other ideas that everyone dares not guess.

But what is a day at the ocean without the risk? Without the possibility of being drawn into the water by a tide of even whisked away, of being tossed into the air by a wave and caught by another? What is _life_ without risk? Without the playfulness and challenge that come with it? Risk is, of course, sometimes a bother, but when it is faced and overcome, it is a challenge that has been won, and the memory of it is a trophy. Gabriel, of course, had been somewhat of a bother, but now, as he sits in the small sword of the town’s few occupants, looking absolutely smashing and somehow innocent in a suit, he is a living symbol of the risks that Balthazar has overcome. A symbol of Balthazar’s love for Castiel which can never be overcome.

In the ocean, at the beach, lives comfort also, lives family. And sitting next to their daughter and her boyfriend, are the epitome of a loving, caring family. Sitting next to Jo and Chuck, are Bobby and Ellen, exciting beyond belief for the wedding of two men they seem to have taken in as their own sons. Even as Bobby stands to move behind the podium as the ceremony begins, the bond between he and his wife is still clear in aura, as is the bond between the two parents and Jo and the bond between the entire family and the rest of the community. Ellen holds Jo’s hand, and Jo holds Chuck’s.

As Balthazar and Castiel stand in front of the podium, facing each other and clasping each other’s hands, gentle yet wanting, the breeze turns to currents and the chirps of birds to the splashes of fish. The plants are seaweed and the grass is sand, the podium is a coral reef and Balthazar can see it all in Castiel’s eyes.

When Balthazar looks into Castiel’s eyes, he sees waves in the ribbons of color and emotion that live in them. He sees life, the life of Castiel’s that he helped to save, the life that makes him love Castiel more each day than he could ever have imagined the day before. And he sees Castiel’s love for him so clearly in the glint of those perfect eyes. And mystery, of course. Castiel is a mystery, himself, so much learned already but still so much to learn. And risk, Balthazar sees, because their entire relationship is a bigger risk than either of them have ever taken, than anyone they’ve ever known has ever taken.

In Castiel, also, is the comfort that Balthazar has never gotten from a single other soul. Because Castiel _cares,_ more than just about anyone Balthazar’s ever known.

Bobby begins to speak, and the two synchronized hearts in front of him begin to flutter incessantly.

“Do you, Balthazar Powers, take this man, Castiel Novak, as your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do,” Balthazar breaths. More than anything in the world, he does.

“And do you, Castiel Novak, take this man, Balthazar Powers, as your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.” More than anything in the world, Castiel does as well.

“You may now kiss.”

As their lips touch, sparks are lit in Balthazar’s lips and ignited throughout his whole body, before they are put out by the ocean which stands in front of him, vast and powerful, pouring water into him through his hands and mouth. And in that moment, with his lips locked with Castiel’s and feeling like they are the only two people in the world, Balthazar swears that he is happy enough to simply die without a grievance in the world.

 

Grand Star Times  
April 29th, 2047

One could say that a small Ontario wedding went out with a _bang,_ when the two grooms were simultaneously shot upon sharing their first kiss as a married couple. Castiel Novak (35) and Balthazar Powers (44) were suspected to be American fugitives, who had been on the run and in hideout for just under a year before they were caught up to by the U.S. government. We are not able to disclose much information on these two at the moment; however, we will be able to report more as more is released to the public.


End file.
